Maria Travers

Sometimes I feel like I was made to move, the fibers and essence of my being woven together so that I would dance. Beginning at age three, my world was saturated with my love of classical ballet. I later found myself growing into jazz and flowing into modern dance forms, experimenting with sultry Argentine tango and other ballroom styles, and winding my round, pregnant curves through belly dancing. In between, I might be seen randomly leaping through parking lots and spinning around street lampposts…

A few years ago, after suffering from chronic dance-related joint pain, a friend invited me to a yoga class. What I found was a medium through which I can align my body in a more healthy way. I can also consciously move gracefully with and through moments of joy, grief, gratitude, and whatever else life brings. In the practice of yoga, I found a union of spiritual longing expressed through the longing of my body to stretch outward, contract inward, trace circles through the air, pause in shimmering stillness…

When I experienced my first Expressive Yoga Dance class, I felt like I had found a perfect place for myself – one that fused the healing power of yoga with my inner calling to dance. I felt so alive and exhilarated as I joined together with a community of free-spirited individuals. And I experienced the innate joy of dancing with abandon to the pulsing rhythm of live drummers.

In Expressive Yoga, I feel that my body can become poetry moving through space, limbs arcing and articulating, spine undulating, vocal chords vibrating, and breath cleansing, washing through the Self – a true opportunity to awaken and express my dancing soul…

I am excited and honored to be an ongoing student and to become a teacher of Expressive Yoga, Sacred Dance Fusion, and Expressive Yoga Dance. I look forward to sharing these sacred, beautiful, inspiring art forms and expressions of life with you.

“I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.”

-Oriah Mountain Dreamer